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So much for thermal paste
- Thread starter F-Train
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I remember people reapplying thermal paste back in the CoreDuo MacBook Pro. It has always seemed not worth it. For whatever reason, Apple has always chosen to run Intel processors to their temperature limit. They seem comfortable with it and I think they probably have come up with good reasons why it is ok. I don't like it, but I also think they have done this with purpose, so I always think it best to trust the side that has a ton of engineers working the problem and building to whatever desired spec.
Years ago I used to use Arctic Silver brand paste on all my home built AMD and Intel PCs. The rule of thumb is that if you use a thinner paste to replace the stock thermal pastes that are usually thicker then you will need to replace it more often. The thinner pastes work well at first but can be worse than the thicker stock pastes over time. If you have an older PC that is overheating from poor cooling then it's worth trying but with newer PCs or Macs it's probably best to leave the standard paste as it is.
Looks to be one of those rare occasions when I am not even tempted to waste money 
Thanks for the link.
Looks to be one of those rare occasions when I am not even tempted to waste money
What next? Cinebench tests comparing $700 silver-coated audiophile power cords to the Mini's $3 power cord?
Why the negativity? It's interesting results, for sure. Apple is clearly comfortable operating near the CPU's thermal limits, and no amount of thermal paste quality is going to affect this tangibly.
Yes, it was meant as humor. And FWIW, I consider myself an audiophile too, but an old-school audiophile-engineer, which means designing products for performance that can be both objectively measured and unequivocally heard by non-audiophiles.
I've spent more than 40 years designing state-of-the-art electronic products so I do find it humorous that "experts" whose engineering expertise ends at swapping CPU's on a PC motherboard think they can increase the REAL performance of an intricately designed system with a different brand of goop. We (engineers) do make mistakes, most often when implementing new unproven technologies, but selecting thermal paste isn't really in that category. I suspect it would have taken a significantly bigger change in the product design to reliably get more performance from the chosen CPU. And I'm quite comfortable that the Apple engineers, working from the Intel engineer's specs, are operating the CPU safely.
I got a smile from "$700 silver-coated audiophile power cord" and chuckled out loud when I came to "different brand of goop".
You're on a roll
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A perfect Xmas stocking stuffer ....
RED WAVE
from $700.00
Three 10 awg conductors with 1,386 strands of pure, silver-coated OFC in a low inductance, double-shielded construction ...
The foundation of any audio or home theater system is the power delivered to it, and the RED WAVE is the most important improvement that can be made to your power delivery system. It is custom terminated with WattGate Audio Grade connectors, which are plated with 2.0 Microns of 24 karat gold.
https://silversonic.com/products/power-cables/red-wave/
RED WAVE
from $700.00
Three 10 awg conductors with 1,386 strands of pure, silver-coated OFC in a low inductance, double-shielded construction ...
The foundation of any audio or home theater system is the power delivered to it, and the RED WAVE is the most important improvement that can be made to your power delivery system. It is custom terminated with WattGate Audio Grade connectors, which are plated with 2.0 Microns of 24 karat gold.
https://silversonic.com/products/power-cables/red-wave/
I had no real improvement with new thermal paste too (I have used Arctic MX-2).
But what it did for me (i7 Mac mini) was building a fan into a hole in the table below the Mac: My Glory Blow Hole.
That has improved the speed of the CPU because it now can hold higher GHz much longer and gives lower temperature for all components in the Mac like Wifi, SSD etc.
With Cinebench results of 1259 its performance is much higher than before (or compared to the Mac in this video). The single core performance was even the second highest in Geekbench ever recorded for a Mac. And it was even not much louder than before: The 14cm fan below the Mac is less annoying compared to the much smaller built in fan on high load. Only on low temperature the new fan is louder.
Later I've improved it by programming a small background app that controls the fan speed over WiFi depending on the temperature of the CPU (via a self-programmed ESP8266 with PWM). It works really good.
I have put some documentation and the links to the project files (XCode and Arduino) to this thread on egpu.io: https://egpu.io/forums/gpu-monitor-...-thermal-solutions-thread/paged/2/#post-49475
and
https://egpu.io/forums/gpu-monitor-...-thermal-solutions-thread/paged/3/#post-49935
and
https://egpu.io/forums/gpu-monitor-...-thermal-solutions-thread/paged/3/#post-50011
But what it did for me (i7 Mac mini) was building a fan into a hole in the table below the Mac: My Glory Blow Hole.
That has improved the speed of the CPU because it now can hold higher GHz much longer and gives lower temperature for all components in the Mac like Wifi, SSD etc.
With Cinebench results of 1259 its performance is much higher than before (or compared to the Mac in this video). The single core performance was even the second highest in Geekbench ever recorded for a Mac. And it was even not much louder than before: The 14cm fan below the Mac is less annoying compared to the much smaller built in fan on high load. Only on low temperature the new fan is louder.
Later I've improved it by programming a small background app that controls the fan speed over WiFi depending on the temperature of the CPU (via a self-programmed ESP8266 with PWM). It works really good.
I have put some documentation and the links to the project files (XCode and Arduino) to this thread on egpu.io: https://egpu.io/forums/gpu-monitor-...-thermal-solutions-thread/paged/2/#post-49475
and
https://egpu.io/forums/gpu-monitor-...-thermal-solutions-thread/paged/3/#post-49935
and
https://egpu.io/forums/gpu-monitor-...-thermal-solutions-thread/paged/3/#post-50011
Hello,
Could anybody test how much Performance increase you get when you Turn around the mac with Open case? The 140mm Fan mod is interesting but no Reason for me. An Open case on the bottem with a beautiful stand or a modified cap witch lift Up the mac so that fresh air could come inside, would be nice.
Could anybody test how much Performance increase you get when you Turn around the mac with Open case? The 140mm Fan mod is interesting but no Reason for me. An Open case on the bottem with a beautiful stand or a modified cap witch lift Up the mac so that fresh air could come inside, would be nice.
Don‘t try it. you will be surprised. Get 400MHz higher frequency (i7) on all cores at Full load only for Open the Plastic WITHOUT removing the Grid. It is louder at fullspeed but ok for me. Where can I buy a Custom socket. Akitio , OWC... come on the Solution with the big Fan is ugly, sorry.
the Solution with the big Fan is ugly, sorry.